eliotts_library 's review for:

Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie by Maggie Stiefvater

DID NOT FINISH

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Lament ★★

DNF'd at page 134

I can't believe I'm DNFing a Maggie Stiefvater book but here we are

There are a few reasons I'm DNFing this, the main one being a spoiler so I'll talk about that last

First of all, the writing is kind of terrible for me. I adore Maggie, she's my favourite author of all time, but yikes. This is bad. I think a lot of it has to do with James being the narrator. I liked him in the first book because he was funny and sarcastic, but it's way too much when he's the one narrating. Literally every single line is a joke, even when something is really serious (like the part where I DNF'd) he's still cracking jokes, or at least thinking them, and it's really inappropriate and cringey.

Ballad is also just kind of a mess. The plot feels like it has no direction, at 130 pages I'm still not even sure what the plot was supposed to be. The characters are wildly underdeveloped, the dialogue is awkward, and everything just feels like it's existing in a whole other world somehow. Again, I love Maggie but there is nothing about this book that was well done for me at the point where I stopped

And now for the last straw of what made me DNF. This is a spoiler and also trigger warning for sexual assault

Spoiler

I do not fuck with rape scenes in any kind of media. I strongly dislike when rape is used as a plot device, and I especially dislike how it was handled in this book in particular. Maggie had already made it clear enough that Nuala is treated as less than all the other kinds of fae, there was no need to have her be raped in order to further demonstrate it. While that was bad enough, the way that James handled it when he came to "rescue" her was just awful. I understand that everyone reacts differently to things, but he didn't seem to give a single fuck about what happened. Didn't ask her if she was ok, if she needed anything. He just stood there thinking about what a "psychotic creature" she is and wanting to write shit on his hand while she's crying and trying to straighten her clothes. Oh and restraining himself from making jokes and being sarcastic, because at least he had the common sense to realize that wouldn't be appropriate. Jesus Christ. Like what the fuck is that? Why Maggie thought this would be a good scene to include in this book is beyond me. Maybe it'll serve a purpose to the plot later on, I have no idea, but I won't be sticking around to find out.